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Hmm, the adventure of surfing the web? That forums and such were filled with nerds and quality advice. And the lack of monetization.
I remember (illegally) downloading lots of music, trying webbrowsers and them being super slow on my machine and of course pictures would load even slower. Alter (I think after the 90s were over) discovering Linux, reading forums and everyone was helping each other out. Or discussing detailed things and niche interests. And it had a distinct culture. A suggested/mandatory way of writing and replying so things would be organized and easy to follow.
I did read about Linux on the internet. But i wasn't crazy enough to download something as gigantic as a Linux distribution with my limited DSL connection in the early 2000s. So I did go to my local Mediamarkt (German electronics store chain) and bought a copy of Suse Linux 6.4 which had a bunch of CDs that i used to install my first Linux system. The first time I installed linux from the internet was around the time Ubuntu was already big (I think i installed Breezy Badger then)
Yeah and there were also lots of PC magazines around then. I'm from Germany, too. I bought some Suse version with a similar version number as part of a (to me kinda expensive) PC magazine. Proceeded to wreck the bootloader, then delete most of the files on the PC by accident. Had to copy lots of things from my friends on the next LAN party to get everything back. Took me several attempts and re-installations to get a proper dual-boot. Mainly due to hardware woes. But it convinced me immediately. I'm a Linux user since then. I remember playing all the small games that were either on the CD or small enough to download. Like KTuberling(Kartoffelknülch), TuxRacer, some billiard and marble games, clones of arcade games, Sokoban... Every day a new enticing game to explore. (I was a kid back then.) And I also drew pictures, did the 10 fingers typing lectures and read a lot of books and documentation about the inner workings of Linux. And I was always interested in programming and messing with computers. I already had a C++ for Dummies book at that point. So eventually I got more into programming and constructing silly HTML pages. But I think that was early 2000s. And I remember playing lots of CounterStrike at that point. Just at friends places, because at home we still had dialup and it took us a bit into the 2000s until we got that PC that was able to run Windows 98, ME and then Linux.
Waiting for a BMP to load a few lines at a time before jpeg became ubiquitous!
As a Windows user in the 90s, I remember downloading Slackware. It took a long time for me to understand what it was and how to install it. The idea of a different OS that I could install on my PC was bizarre and not at all intuitive at the time to a computer novice.